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Ana Finel Honigman: My Fashion Week

Regular Global Blue contributor Ana Finel Honigman, a critic and curator, writes on fashion and contemporary art for a variety of publications, including Interview and British Vogue. She shares her insider’s view of Copenhagen Fashion Week

City Guide

Where do you live? I live 50/50 in Berlin’s Mitte and Oxford, England.

What are your impressions of Copenhagen? Copenhagen is genuinely delightful. It’s a very welcoming, airy and alert city. Copenhagen is always my favourite in the fashion week calendar.

Which show are you looking forward to the most this season and why? I am very keen to see Anne Sofie Madsen’s show. I admire her thinking. Her artistic talent is bewitching. Yet, while I am completely captivated by her artwork and I’ve interviewed her for a few publications, I missed her shows for the last two seasons. I cannot wait to finally see her clothes at the industrial, 3,000-square-metre TAP 2 venue.

Which has been the best show space? Copenhagen has the most interesting, opulent and varied show venues of any city that I’ve seen. But the best was when Stine Goya showed her spring/summer 2011 collection salon-style throughout a series of room installations at Harsdorffs Hus. She filled the gilded space with flowers, antique beds, vintage toys, Victorian scientific instruments, a giant stuffed giraffe and live birds, spiders and mice. It was magical.

What are your tips for surviving Fashion Week? I strongly suggest the excellent breakfasts at the First Hotel Skt Petri, the accommodation venue for visiting Fashion Week guests. Schedules are really full and solid food can be scarce. At breakfast, I’m always grabbing napkins of nuts for the road and imploring my friends, like an overprotective mother, to ‘eat, eat, eat!’

What’s your top stop for food during Fashion Week? I once attended a press trip that included dinner at Noma. Ever since, all radishes owe my mouth an apology.

Which is the most treasured piece in your wardrobe and what’s the story behind it? My most treasured piece is the supremely adaptable and eternally elegant black leather bag that my friend Jen Gilpin made me from her Berlin-based DSTM label. It relaxes into a graceful geometric shoulder bag but its extra series of straps transforms it into an enormous, indestructible travel backpack. I carry it everywhere. I’ve had it for less than a year and its already seen 20 cities. It is my hermit-crab shell.

Which is your favourite city for shopping? Despite being a fashion writer, I rarely shop. My most cherished items are all hand-me-downs, gifts, stolen from my mother’s closet or very random finds. But I still love wandering and chatting with friends through Manhattan and Brooklyn’s boutiques.

What do you most like about Copenhagen style? Danes are somehow unaware of how objectively gorgeous they are. They are very comfortable, almost careless, with their beauty. Nothing is more charming or attractive than humility. I suppose that it’s easy to loose perspective when the norm is six feet tall, blond and structurally flawless but Danes genuinely seem shocked over all the positive attention. Personally, I always feel guilty because I can’t take my Danish friends’ problems seriously. It’s like a unicorn having a bad day. It’s hard to relate.

Which is the most fashionable part of Copenhagen? The lovely Latin Quarter is Copenhagen’s chic hipster haven.

Which are your favourite Copenhagen boutiques? Rasmus Barlby’s The Art Of store is one of the world’s few venues that actually deserves the designation concept store. Rather that simply being a curated selection of cool stuff, The Art Of develops various intellectual themes with strong industrial design items, books and fashion pieces that share histories, philosophies and aesthetic ties. The objects are beautiful but useful and the experience is always intellectually inspiring. Having said that, the cool, curated stuff at the original Wood Wood store is always super. And the innovative jewellery in the Designmuseum Danmark gift shop always makes me covetous.

Who is your style icon? Wool Boi Atherton, aka Wolvie or Wolverine. Wolvie is the Pomeranian companion of artist Hope Atherton. Hopey is one of my most cherished friends from Manhattan and Wolvie is my favourite creature. Besides having the best coat, Wolvie looks noble and wild among the bones and other cabinet de curiosités wonders in Hopey’s studio. But he also emanates pure exuberance, curiosity, cleverness and wonder. He’s a great role model for life, not just style.